The Newly Released Microsoft 365 Features

The Newly Released Microsoft 365 Features and Its Impact on Your Business

Microsoft rolled out new features to Microsoft 365 to improve workplace collaboration and user experience. The upgrade comes with a slew of new features and capabilities for OneDrive, Office, Viva, and Teams.

While the September 2022 update comes with several changes, we want to focus on only the major ones that might impact how your business operates.

1. A Revamped OneDrive

Microsoft unveiled updates that simplify access to everything the user might need on OneDrive. The company released a redesigned homepage and a new file-sharing experience.

The Redesigned Homepage Experience

Microsoft revamped the OneDrive Home experience to help users readily resume their work and catch up on what they missed when away. The update allows OneDrive to:

• Show your most relevant files
• List your most recent files
• Surface any activity updates

You’ll see everything at a glance to allow you to prioritize where to start working.

The revamped Home page features a customized “For you” section, showing the most relevant files for you. If the new “For you” section doesn’t highlight a document you want to work on, use the buttons at the top of the Recent file to filter files by type, such as:

• Docx
• Pptx
• Xls
• Pdf

Pin Entire Document Libraries for a Consistent File-Sharing Experience

Microsoft has also released several features on OneDrive on top of the new Home page. The company has released a new Quick access section that allows you to pin document libraries.

The pinning option allows you to access important document libraries readily.

The new release also offers a unified file-sharing experience consistent across OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Office apps.

2. Simplified Creation and Collaboration on Microsoft Office Apps

Microsoft has added new capabilities in Microsoft Office to simplify creation, sharing, and collaboration with Microsoft 365.

People Pinning

Microsoft Office web version allows you to pin people under My content section to personalize your experience on Microsoft Office. You can pin your top collaborators to access the content from your most important contacts readily.

On Microsoft 365 mobile, commercial users can unveil relevant content, insights, and activity from their Microsoft 365 network.

Microsoft Lens

Microsoft Office mobile has introduced Microsoft Lens. The feature can quickly pull out text from:

• Handwriting
• Screenshots
• Photos
• Camera

You can then copy and paste the text that Microsoft Lens has captured and save them to your device or share it with others. The feature is integrated with OneNote and other Office apps and sync across devices.

Microsoft Excel

In the desktop app and Excel for the web, Microsoft has added a feature that allows you to create a Pivot Table that you can connect directly to a Power BI dataset. The feature allows businesses to analyze data between platforms seamlessly.

Another notable update is that you can easily share a section of the Excel workbook. Some situations require sharing a section instead of the entire workbook when collaborating through Teams or the Web.

The new update has made it efficient to share a link to a specific range, table, or chart.

3. New Feature on Microsoft Viva to Reconnect Leaders and Employees

Microsoft has expanded the Microsoft Viva platform to connect employees to:

• Company culture
• Each other
• The organization’s mission
• Their team
• Business goals.

Microsoft says that they’re building Viva to empower and energize employees. The company noted that a hybrid working environment creates a huge disconnect between business leaders and employees. The tech giant introduced Microsoft Viva.

Some of the new features on Viva include:

• Viva Pulse: The tool allows team leads and managers to get regular and confidential feedback about employees’ experiences. The tool uses research-backed and smart templates to help business leaders identify what works, where to focus, and how to solve the team’s needs.
• Viva Amplify: The new feature allows communicators and leaders to reach employees no matter where they are. Viva amplify centralizes communication campaigns, enable publishing across the different platform on Microsoft 365, provide writing guidance to improve message resonance and offer metrics for improvement.
• Viva Goals: Microsoft introduces Viva Goals to help businesses connect employees to their organization’s goals, align them at scale, and drive business results. New Viva Goals integration will bring goals into the workflow. You can use Viva Goals as a standalone web application or use it directly from inside Teams or Microsoft’s third-party integrations.

4. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft rolled out many changes to boost and refine user experience on Teams. While there are several September 2022 updates on Teams, the main ones include the following:

Video Clip in Chat

The new update on Teams allows you to record and send videos in a one-on-one or group chat. The feature has been in preview mode, but now it’s available since September’s update.

After recording a video clip, you can edit the length before sending it. The feature comes in handy when you want to introduce yourself or show something visually, like merchandise.

New Poll-Creation Experience

Teams initially included a poll feature to drive engagement. Microsoft released new functionality to assist team organizers in creating and launching polls before and during the meeting.

The new release allows you to create and launch new pre-defined polls or repurpose recent polls to increase engagement and collect input from the attendees. The feature is AI-powered and will roll out automatically.

Microsoft has also added animation for voting and result views to make polls more interactive and engaging.

New Integration Capabilities For Teams

Microsoft released Teams interoperability with Azure Communication Services. Your business can develop new apps and experiences which connect people to Teams through chats, voice, video, and screen sharing.

The new release offers customizable, production-ready UI components that you can easily add to the applications you’re developing.

Schilling IT Can Help Your Business Stay on Top of Microsoft 365 Product and Feature Changes

Microsoft 365 offers a diverse suite of products for the corporate world. With each update, your business gets a new and improved way to execute your job.

At Schilling IT, we can help you leverage many different tools and update releases to run your business. Our Microsoft 365 experts can help you ensure that no features or upgrades go to waste. Contact us today to get the most out of Microsoft’s new updates.